Working-Class RCers Speak about Divestment
A group of working-class Co-Counselors were invited to a recent owning-class workshop to share their thinking about divesting surplus money. The following are some of their comments.
Beth Edmonds: Jo Saunders [the International Liberation Reference Person for Owning-Class People and the leader of the workshop] very much wants you to divest your surplus money. She wants this because she understands that the function of surplus money is to keep you separate. That’s its real function. You’ve been told that it’s for security and safety. In Co-Counseling we say that real security is with people. That is the truth. Money just fouls up the works.
The question that’s really before us is, how do we have a meaningful life? How do we have a life that allows us to be fully human and connected? For the owning class, I think part of the answer lies in divesting wealth, in “giving the money back.”
With every oppression, we are understanding that it’s the separation, the places where we have been held apart from one another, that’s been the difficulty. So this morning, I am asking you to “come home to us,” with your eyes and heart open. And I am encouraging you to see where you can stand next to us—not overpower us but stand next to us. I’ve known lots of you for many, many years. I know that you know how to do this.
I have asked fifteen working-class RCers to take three minutes each to say what they think from their perspective. I’ve asked them to try not to censor themselves. I think that will be useful. This will take most of the class time, and then we will have support groups.
Excerpts from the other working-class RCers’ comments:
- Jo did an unprecedented thing in asking us, the so-called oppressed group, to come and help the oppressor. To my knowledge, this has not been done before. I think it was brilliant.
- I’ve Co-Counseled with Jo for nearly twenty-seven years. I want you to join her. She is trying to lead you in a particular direction—toward giving up privilege and divesting—for a particular reason: to help you get your minds back and figure out how to end capitalism.
- I think about what Tim Jackins says about going after [pursuing] the hardest thing. I never thought money was the hardest thing for the owning class. I didn’t understand Jo’s direction about giving up their money. But after yesterday’s demonstrations on giving up money and watching what happened for each client, I thought, “Oh, my gosh! This is all about money!” Maybe the money gives you a little safety, but it comes at a great cost.
- In terms of divesting wealth, my thinking is that if you don’t figure out how to put the money to really good use in the next decade or so, you probably won’t have it anyway. That will seem like a big loss when you look back, ten or fifteen years down the road.
- You can make it so that all the projects that people want to do with RC can be funded properly, without anybody having to worry about it.
- You all know about “decide, act, and then discharge.” Of your multimillions, take one million, take two million, and decide what to do with it, decide to give it away. Ask your working-class allies to stop resenting you and help you figure this out.
- I don’t know how much money you need. I, as much as anybody, have to discharge on giving up monetary security and finding people instead. I think you could use your money to find power.
- Jo and I have known each other for about thirty years. Our relationship is one of the most important in my life. We’re a raised-working-class younger Jewish guy and an owning-class Gentile older woman, which speaks hugely about what’s possible.
There’s all that can be said about money, about divestment, about a lot of different things. But I’m here because of my relationship with Jo. I think you need to follow her lead, because she is the one who has put the most time and effort into thinking about this topic.
- There’s a confusion that things are transactional, when they need to be relational. I think that’s part of what many owning-class people struggle with.
- I would love to know and love you all. I, too, am a “lost child.” Everybody in this room is a “lost child,” with unique experiences that made us so. We survived. Here we are. I hope you’ll decide to do this [divest]. I will fight alongside you every inch of the way if you do. I promise you that.
- When I was in ninth grade, I was invited to attend an owning-class prep school and someone paid for me to go. So I went. This workshop is a familiar place to me. All of you are familiar. I feel like I went to high school with you.
I loved going to school there. I really did. It was so neat [good] to not be in public school where we were treated like crap [very badly]. At the prep school it seemed like everybody got to do what they wanted to do. And the money was amazing! It dripped off of people, their cars, their haircuts, the way they walked. And the food they had in their houses was excessive!
I always thought that if my family had a million dollars, our lives would be better. After a couple of years at that school, I mostly just felt sorry for the young people there. I hung out [spent relaxed unstructured time] with a lot of different groups of people at the school because, I think, I wasn’t a challenge to anyone. I didn’t fit in anywhere. I was kind of like a mascot.
I feel like we have these two opposing ideas about each other. Somehow we have to go for [reach out to] each other.
- You are more important than money. I think part of what you got told when you were little was that things and money were more important than you. It’s not true.
I know we are asking you to do something that will get at the very core of your sense of survival.
- I want you with me. I want you with me completely. We’ve got a fast-paced, action-packed next ten years and beyond. You have a chance to be in on [involved in] some of the most important pieces of history ever. And I want you to lean on me with every cell of your body.
- I think working-class people were raised to see things that have been hidden from you. We were raised to know that the “herd” matters before the individual.
- I was told that the owning class was smarter and luckier than we were. Luck is not something one can depend on, and perhaps that’s part of what keeps the owning class so scared.
- Others on the panel have talked about how money keeps the owning class separate, which is true. But I think more than that it keeps you confused. It leads to confusion based on patterns of greed and selfishness and a perspective about your place in the larger society that doesn’t make any sense at all.
What has become clearer to me over the last two days is that money for the owning class functions as an addiction. And we know in Co-Counseling how to get over an addiction: For some period of time we discharge, but at some point, we have to move from discharge to action.
- It looks to me like part of the confusion for owning-class people is that they think their relationship with money is real, like a relationship with a person.
- Jo is precious and unique, and any “taking for granted” of her strengths and vision is a reflection of owning-class patterns.
- We’re looking at the collapse of capitalism in our lifetimes. It has already started. This raises a question: why do you do owning-class liberation work? Is it because it provides a safe place in which to discharge the early hurts and feel better? Is it because you can have closer relationships with the working-class people around you? Or do you do it because you’ve made the decision to end class oppression?
If you are completely honest with yourself, have you made the decision to end oppression? It is easy for us to fool ourselves about this. If you really make the decision, you will know what to do with your wealth and privilege. But you have to be completely honest with yourself. How do you actually feel about the collapse of capitalism?
Because of the situation facing us in the world, there isn’t time to wait until you’ve discharged all the feelings related to this before you act. You’re going to have to act first and discharge afterward.
Also, because of how little time there is, we don’t have time to work on this only in separate class groups. We can’t let our upsets with one another get in the way of our coming together. I think we actually have to build a united front to end class oppression. The COVID crisis has shown us the importance of community and relationships.
The collapse of capitalism doesn’t mean the end of class oppression. Capitalism, as we know it, could collapse and be replaced by something worse.
You have to make a decision—about where you will put your energy, how you will spend the rest of your life, knowing that the collapse will happen in our lifetimes.
- What I believe we are talking about is how we can get our minds here with your minds. How do we really know and understand what you’re up against and where you are coming from?
- It’s a huge revolutionary act to give up your capital—and to give it to, or use it for, projects that really need it. That act gives you many opportunities to talk with people, to influence people to do the same, to remove a piece of privilege holding up our economic system.
- I think the money is getting in your way, and I don’t want that for you. I’ve seen you. I can see who you are. You are fully human, and I love you. I want to be with you. I want us all to be together. I’m sad for you that you got burdened with the money. That’s a hard thing for anybody. I apologize that the situation brought that about.
- It seems to me that it’s hard for you to believe in your relationships, to consider that relationships are what make a difference in your life. In my opinion, your money makes no difference. None. Not at the end of the day. It makes no difference because it separates you from us and from everything that’s human.
I remember Harvey Jackins talking about what happened to the owning class, that you were taken away from us by an evil sorcerer. We are getting you back and putting you where you belong, under the crook of our arms. That’s the invitation we’re making to you. Whatever way it lands on you, the invitation is “Be with us. Let’s do this together.”
(Present Time 204, July 2021)